| Thu 31 Jul 2008, 8:00 | | AEA - African Eagle Resources Plc - Miyabi Gold Project, Tanzania |
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AEA
AEA
AEA - African Eagle Resources Plc - Miyabi Gold Project, Tanzania
African Eagle Resources plc
(Incorporated in England and Wales, registered number 3912362)
AIM share code: AFE & AIM ISIN: GB0003394813
JSE share code: AEA & JSE ISIN: GB0003394813
MIYABI GOLD PROJECT, TANZANIA
African Eagle Resources plc announces that Randgold Resources, its joint venture
(JV) partner on the Miyabi Gold Project in Tanzania, has given the Company
notice of withdrawal from the JV.
Commenting, African Eagle`s Managing Director Mr Parker said "Randgold has
indicated that this decision is part of its intention to focus exploration
efforts on West Africa. We are pleased with the investment and progress made at
Miyabi by Randgold under the JV. Now that African Eagle has regained full
control and ownership of the project, we will now resume work building on the
existing gold resources, using the extensive results of the regional
exploration, geological drilling and structural modelling generated by
Randgold`s team over the past 15 months, together with the gold mineralised
targets identified from our own exploration.
"Randgold`s exploration at Miyabi was directed principally at testing their
conceptual deposit model and was not intended to increase the existing 0.5Moz
resource in the Miyabi Gold Corridor. This will now be our focus, as African
Eagle`s geologists remain convinced that there is good potential for a deposit
of 1Moz or more at Miyabi.
A number of targets in the Corridor, including intercepts of 3m at 6.94 g/t
gold, 3m at 6.70 g/t and 9m at 0.8 g/t from previous African Eagle drilling
outside the current resource, were not evaluated systematically under Randgold`s
management.
African Eagle will consider new partners for Miyabi and will follow up a number
of approaches which it could not pursue until now".
The Miyabi project area contains a major shear zone gold system which forms a
7km x 2km gold-bearing corridor. Although only part of the system has been
drilled to date, African Eagle has been able to define a JORC-standard resource
of 520,000oz of gold. Metallurgical tests have shown that the gold can readily
be extracted by conventional leaching. The Company holds licences covering more
than 500kmSquared surrounding the main corridor and has defined numerous other
targets from regional exploration.
Mark Parker
Managing Director
African Eagle Resources plc
31 June 2008
Qualified Person (AFE)
Information in this report relating to exploration results is based on data
reviewed by Mr Christopher Davies BSc, MSc, DIC, FSEG, FAusIMM, Operations
Director for African Eagle, who is a Fellow of the Australasian Institute of
Mining and Metallurgy, has more than 27 years relevant experience in mineral
exploration and is a Qualified Person under AIM rules. Mr Davies consents to the
inclusion of the information in the form and context in which it appears.
Technical terms
A glossary of technical terms used by African Eagle in this announcement and
other published material may be found at www.africaneagle.co.uk/african-eagle-
projects-glossary.html
For further information:
Mark Parker
Managing Director
African Eagle
+44 20 7248 6059
+44 77 5640 6899
Nicola Marrin
Seymour Pierce Limited,
London
Nominated Adviser
+ 44 20 7107 8000
Charmane Russell
Russell & Associates,
Johannesburg
+ 27 11 8803924
+27 82 8928052
Ed Portman / Leesa Peters
Conduit PR, London
+44 20 7429 6607
+44 (0) 7733 363 501
About Miyabi
The Miyabi Gold Project lies in the southwest part of the Lake Victoria
Goldfield of Tanzania, about 50km west-southwest of Kahama township in Shinyanga
District. The multi-zoned gold system at Miyabi, discovered by African Eagle`s
geochemical prospecting team, forms a corridor around 7km long by 2km wide and
is associated with a major shear zone through greenstone and granitic rocks. To
date, African Eagle`s drilling has delineated five principal orebodies: Faida,
Shambani Main and North, Ngaya and Kilimani.
In early 2006, the Company commissioned SRK Consulting Ltd to conduct a formal
resource estimate based on all drill results to date. The total JORC compliant
Mineral Resource was estimated to be 12.4Mt at a grade of 1.3g/t, containing
520,000 ounces of gold, using a cut-off grade of 0.5g/t, which is appropriate to
Tanzanian deposits of the Miyabi type. Of this, 71% is in the Indicated
category.
Independent metallurgical testing of systematically selected gold-bearing drill
samples representative of all of the principal mineralised zones at Miyabi
showed that standard leaching recovers 95% of the gold from the ore.
The potential for adding to the gold resource at Miyabi is very good, with many
targets identified from geophysical and geochemical surveys within the main
mineralised corridor remaining to be drilled, and African Eagle believes that
the project could hold at least one million ounces.
The Company`s prospecting licences also cover more than 500 square kilometres of
highly prospective granite-greenstone terrain around the main mineralised
corridor and regional exploration of these areas has identified several
promising targets.
About African Eagle
African Eagle is a diversified mineral exploration and development company
operating in eastern and central Africa. The Company`s principal advanced
projects are the Mkushi Copper Mines project in Zambia, for which a Feasibility
Study will be completed in Q4 2008, and the Miyabi gold project in Tanzania, at
which the Company has defined an estimated half-million ounce gold resource. The
Company also holds a large well-balanced portfolio of promising earlier stage
gold and base metal projects, including the Ndola and Mokambo copper projects.
Zambia, Tanzania and Mozambique, the sites of African Eagle`s projects, are all
countries which have highly prospective geology, relatively low above-ground
risks and track records of successful major investments in the metals and
minerals industries.
African Eagle specialises in project generation and exploration. To take its
discoveries into production, it seeks to sign up industry partners with records
of successful mine development. These joint ventures and, in time, the revenue
from advanced projects, will finance future exploration and new discoveries.
Date: 31/07/2008 08:00:21 Produced by the JSE SENS Department.
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